Lenta has produced a tremendous guide to how Boris Yeltsin won Russia’s strangest presidential election, 30 years ago this summer.

Ahead of the campaign, his ratings stood at only 5%, with his Communist challenger well ahead. The newly minted Oligarchs were panicking and Yeltsin himself was so ill his team had to hide him from the public.

So how did he win? The mood of 1996 was bizarre even by Russian standards.

The country was full of mystics, healers, psychics, pyramid schemes, zealots and political theatre. Yeltsin’s security people reportedly consulted astrologers and fortune-tellers and one foreign trip was allegedly blocked because predictions warned he might give away the Kuril Islands to Japan.

Russia was half collapsing and half hallucinating.

Let’s take a stroll down memory lane and revisit the countless times 'experts' predicted Russia’s imminent collapse. 🧵

September 1999: Anders Åslund in Foreign Affairs confidently declares Russia is 'on the verge of collapse.' Anders is still out there, saying the same stuff. May 2001: The Atlantic runs 'Russia Is Finished,' declaring its 'unstoppable descent into irrelevance.' Two decades later, Russia’s still here, and the article’s the only thing that’s irrelevant. 🤷‍♂️

Let’s take a stroll down memory lane and revisit the countless times 'experts' predicted Russia’s imminent collapse. 🧵

September 1999: Anders Åslund in Foreign Affairs confidently declares Russia is 'on the verge of collapse.' Anders is still out there, saying the same stuff. May 2001: The Atlantic runs 'Russia Is Finished,' declaring its 'unstoppable descent into irrelevance.' Two decades later, Russia’s still here, and the article’s the only thing that’s irrelevant. Bold take, Jeffrey Tayler. 🤷‍♂️